Rob Thurman - Doubletake

I started to get a scent off of her. She wasn’t human, not down here. So what was she? Goodfellow put an end to that quickly. “Ah, gamiseme tora . No, no, no. I can’t.…Trixa would kick my…No, no. I apologize, Ms.…?” He knew her, but he didn’t know her name? Or from the shifting from foot to foot was he waiting for the name she was using?

“Charla Tae-Lynn.” Despite the name, she was no countrified Alice down the rabbit hole, this chick. No way. “But this one”—her hand straightened the collar of my bloody, torn shirt—“he can call me Tae. Three names can be a mouthful and then some. And if I want a mouthful, there are lots more pleasurable mouthfuls to be had, ain’t there, sugar?” My brain fried at the double entendre. She winked, slapped my ass—which enjoyed it thoroughly—and disappeared into the milling crowd.

“Who…?”

“No.” Goodfellow shoved me along in the opposite direction.

“But…”

“ No .” He kept shoving. “You think Delilah is hot shit? That one would eat Delilah alive and have room for the whole Lupa pack for dessert.”

“What is she?” Niko asked. “She has a…presence.”

“Presence? Presence? You’ve no idea. And we have enough trouble. Given another day, Cal won’t have a dick to insert anywhere anyway. He’ll be Janus mush or locked in with a pit of succubae that he wants nothing to do with and they want even less to do with him. Either way, his sex life is on hold. How about we get to work and try to do something about that…and save our lives, if that’s not too much to ask for?”

We ended up at the last stall next to the bricked-up wall. This place was unbelievable. It reminded me of the trade shows where, hand to God, the guns were all within the law, Officers, until five minutes later when the cops were gone and you were being shown the latest in the highly illegal, mean-as-rattlesnake-poison, newest design of machine gun to come out of Israel. So new you could feel the packing grease on the stock.

“This is, as I said, my last guess. We hit the black market to see if anyone had been asking about a nine-foot artifact of assassination, and there’s no one better to ask than my old friend the Artful Dodger.” He was trying to summon up the old Goodfellow energy, but the shape we were all in, none of us felt like being upright, much less bargaining with a thief. And if he went by the Artful Dodger, he was a thief. But so was Robin and he had no equal.

Dodger grunted, unimpressed with Goodfellow’s praise.

“Although it’s probably pointless, as Janus’s type are gone for all time or not for sale. But if someone needed Janus, whether he already possessed him or stole him, a Rom perhaps or someone more Grimmly inclined, that doesn’t mean we make the assumption he had the words to activate him. If they didn’t, and as Hephaestus isn’t talking—sanely—this would the only place to find them. Words sell for more than gold or anything else often enough.”

Dodger grunted in agreement on that one.

“And if a Rom did buy them, it would be here, as I doubt more and more that Hephaestus entrusted them to some of the Vayash; it would be like giving your car keys to a two-year-old and telling him to take a drive around the block. Disaster.” Robin leaned against the booth, yawning, exhausted as we all were. “If it were Grimm, on the other hand, he’d drive Janus like Andretti with a Viper.”

The Dodger grunted at him again—a “get off, you lazy bastard” one. I had to admire him. He could grunt with the best of them.

Hoping the stall was sturdy, I watched Robin lean harder, as equally unimpressed with Dodger as Dodger was with him. He yawned again before returning to his train of thought. “If those words were found here, then we might find the second set. The ones that put the Statue of Liberty’s boyfriend back to sleep. Dodger, can you point us in the right direction? I know you’re more about the glitter and shine than that boring reading and writing.”

“Money, lives, and blood no object?” The grunt became a question. “And I learnt me some lettering. If it makes money, I learn.”

“Good for you, and price no object? Who do you think you’re talking to? Who got you the Trojan horse while Troy fell? And it was on fire at the time. If my business wasn’t serious, I’d take it to Walmart.” He lifted a shoe off the damp black-green fungus creeping across the floor and the rivulets of sewer water that seeped into anything belowground in the city. “At least they mop at Walmart. I’ve heard people say so.”

“Lemme look, guvnor.” That he mixed with a grunt and grumble to keep his vocal cords in the game. He swept jewelry, silver and gold teeth, metallic nuggets—all that was shiny and covered the threadbare black velvet into a large Tupperware bin. Robin didn’t go to Walmart, but this guy did. Putting them away, he then pulled out and slammed down a book as thick as a NYC phone book but wider, bigger, and the cover was definitely made of tanned, dark brown human skin. It was the frigging Necronomicon, and if it wasn’t, it should’ve been. “I’ve expanded me business.” Dodger chortled slyly. “On my way to being a right proper gentleman now, I am. I am. Rich I’ll be, sitting up in some fancy roost like you.”

Goodfellow groaned. “Don’t start that again. Not that accent. If you can’t do it correctly, don’t do it at all. I cut your tongue out once. Don’t make me do it again.”

Cut it out, huh? It’d grown back nice, though, hadn’t it? Which meant…

The guy was short, had to be six inches under five feet, and he looked odd, as if the face of a ten- or twelve-year-old boy had aged while the rest of him, including his child-size hands, didn’t grow. He had a face that would substitute for a prune, mud brown hair cut in a bowl cut, and eyes that matched the mud of his hair. He looked human, but I’d bet Kalakos’s left nut, right one too, that he wasn’t. Down here Niko and the gypsy were the only humans walking around. As for me, there was no dual citizenship in monster–human land.

I leaned a few inches closer for a whiff to get a trace of what he really was. I narrowed my eyes. All I was getting was human, every last cell. I tried elsewhere, the last refuge of a human on the outside but a paien on the inside, their minds—that was always the difference. It took but one cell to get you in the club, and where better to hide it? And from the faintest trace I detected, it was one cell. One damn cell to have him crossing the line. That was a trick.

And developed into a bigger one than I thought, as Dodger was giving me the same once-over.

“Monster.”

This time I wasn’t the one saying it. Dodger was. He said it to me as he grew two feet taller, his arms became wings, his head narrowed, his mouth became a beak, and black feathers covered him. The irises of his now round eyes were a white full-moon shine. They made his feathers appear blacker. The night and the moon, as one.

“Monster,” he croaked. “ Auphe! ”

No one else had heard the “Auphe” over the loud bickering of the customers as Niko wrapped his hand around the beak, shutting it tightly. The wings flapped desperately as Robin did his best to calm him down. As he did, Niko said, “The Artful Dodger from Dickens. His real name in the book was Jack Dawkins. Jackdaw. A jackdaw is one of the known tricksters. Very clever. I wonder who fooled who? Did Dickens fool his readers or did Jackdaw fool Dickens?”

“He’s very…free…with his knowledge,” Kalakos said, eyes fixed on Jackdaw, but the comment was meant for Niko.

“And you just noticed?” I asked wryly.

Goodfellow wasn’t having any luck with the convincing or restraining until he snapped, “He is what he is. Do you want to annoy him enough that he tells us to let you go for him to handle your squawking death wish?”